So we sat down for dinner the other night, and this is how my almost-8-year-old decided to start the table time discussion: “Ok Dad – what’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever done?”
I almost choked. Seriously? You’re only seven! Do you really want to go there already? I thought, wide-eyed. I mean, in the Christian household, this conversation can rank right up there with the sex talk. Ironically the sex talk doesn’t scare me that much because I’ve had the, um, pleasure (?) of giving that talk to other people’s kids a hundred times. For some of them it came much, much too late, so now I fear I’ve fallen into the embarrassingly-open-about-that-subject category to my kids. Oh, they will have the sex talk. But the dumbest thing ever talk? I’m not prepared for that one yet.
Thankfully the fact that his age still registers in the single digit side of the scale clicked in our heads before there was any major omission of guilt on either of our parts. Dad did mention something about a 50 foot bridge that I’m hoping went right over his laughing little head, but it didn’t take us too long after that to realize that in his mind “dumbest thing ever” equated with “goofiest thing to make your friends laugh”, and not some giant gateway into the moral philosophy behind how a life should be lived. Whew. Crisis averted. For the moment.
The thing is, one day I will have to tell my kids the some of the dumbest things I’ve ever done. It’s not that I haven’t shared these things with anyone before, or even that I haven’t confessed them in front of a room full of teenagers – because I have. It’s not that I’m ashamed of anything in my past or that I hold a secret criminal record or anything, it’s just that this time it’s going to be my kids learning about my flaws and not someone else’s. My kids finding out that mom has broken the rules before. My kids discovering that their very own “Smother” who is too afraid to let them have fun sometimes has herself flirted with mortal danger a time or two in the name of fun. And the fact behind it all is that I don’t want to be that exposed in front of them.
I mean, I know my kids are well aware that I am not by any stretch of anyone’s Disney-sized imagination perfect. They’ve seen me at my weakest and worst. Just ask my five year old, who, during prayer requests the other day asked his church class to please pray for “the dragon that drove me here”. Um, that would be me. The dragon. You get my point.
They know I’m not perfect, but I’m realizing that they need to know something else about me – they need to know I’m real. This has always been an important part of ministry to me, and I’ve gone to great lengths to let other people’s teenagers know that I am approachable and real in every way I know how to be. They can ask me any question and will get as honest an answer as I know to give. It’s just hitting me, though, that I need to be just as transparent with my own kids as they get older. There will be certain boundaries, yes, but they need to see that I’ve messed up before in some pretty big ways, and it all turned out ok because of Jesus. They need to know that we all do dumb things and God loves us anyway (but, of course, that life is so much better when we try to avoid certain dumb things all together… I am still their mom…).
So tonight I’ll probably do what I do most nights while they’re in the shower. I’ll straighten the sheets and blankets on their bed, essentially making it up before they get in it. There’s something about a made-up bed that seems like a fresh start to me – a chance to crawl into a smooth space, close our eyes and let God wipe our slate clean before we wake up and start to scribble on it all over again. So I’ll make up the bed to a prayer for their salvation, and I’ll turn down the sheets to the words, “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy” as I’ve done so many times before. Later I’ll tuck them in and together we’ll say our prayers, only tonight I might add a request for the Lord to help me be real with them in a way that will help them see who He has been in my life and who He will always be in theirs. Perhaps tomorrow He’ll show me how to do just that…
…hopefully without having to confess any of my truly dumbest moments, but we’ll see.
Until then,
Samantha
